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american tunes

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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american tunes

On this Election Eve, I spent some time in my record collection looking for songs to carry me over the next few days. Many are songs that have carried me for years. I hope they offer some solace and solidarity as we ponder the fate of our nation.

For many reasons, I wish “America” was our national anthem. I’ll give you two right now: it is not a war song and it is way easier to sing. Ray Charles sings my favorite version of it, not only because it’s him singing, but also because he starts with this verse

oh beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife
who more than self, their country loved and mercy more than life
America, America may God thy gold refine
till all success be nobleness
And every gain divined

as if to say, let’s get mercy and integrity in place and then we can talk about the spacious skies.

“America” is one of my favorite Paul Simon songs (there are two on this list). I bought Bookends when it came out in 1968 (I was eleven) and the song haunted me even then.

Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
and I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
they’ve all come to look for America

The Avett Brothers song “We Americans” is a road song that’s also looking for America as well as trying to come to terms with the deep contradictions and paradoxes in our story.

I’ve been to every state and seen shore to shore
the still open wounds of the Civil War
watched blind hatred bounce back and forth
seen vile prejudice both in the south and the north
and accountability is hard to impose
on ghosts of ancestors haunting the halls of our conscience
but the path of grace and good will is still here
for those of us who may be considered among the living

I am a son of God and man and I may never understand
the good and evil but I dearly love this land
because of and in spite of we the people

Jackson Browne released “For America” in 1986. I don’t know that there has been a year since that his song didn’t apply.

I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can’t let go till she comes around
until the land of the free is awake and can see
and until her conscience has been found

Feels like we are still searching.

In “All American Made” Margo Price joins the chorus of those who love America and feel heart-broken at the same time. As I heard Bruce Springsteen say from the stage many years ago before he sang “This Land is Your Land,” “Good patriots ask good questions.”

I was just a child unaware of the effects
raised on sports and Jesus and all the usual suspects
so tell me, Mr. Petty, what do you think will happen next?
that’s all American made

I wonder if the president gets much sleep at night
and if the folks on welfare are making it alright
but I’m dreaming of that highway that stretches out of sight
that’s all American made

Speaking of “”This Land is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie wrote the song as a rebuttal to “God Bless America.” Instead of “land that I love,” he started with, “This land is your land . . .” If you learned to sing it around a camp fire, you may not have learned his closing verses:

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
by the relief office I seen my people;
as they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
as I go walking that freedom highway;
nobody living can ever make me turn back
this land was made for you and me.

I found this cover by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings that knocks me out.

“American Tune” is the second Paul Simon song on the list tonight. This one came out when I was in high school. The whole lyric is amazing, but these are the particular words I keep coming back to:

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it’s all right, it’s all right
we’ve lived so well so long
still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

Allen Toussaint recorded a cover of the song that ended up being the last thing he recorded before he died.

Mary Chapin Carpenter will close us out with her song, “Goodnight America.”

The recording is from her Youtube series “Songs from Home,” which she has continued during the pandemic. She wrote the following words when she posted this song in July:

Here in the US, it’s the July 4th holiday weekend – our country is undergoing a reckoning with itself, and how to feel about the traditional ways of celebrating Independence Day in the midst of so much learning and unlearning is something many are struggling with. My parents raised us to believe that protest is one of the highest forms of patriotism. And, as the great historian and scholar Ibram X. Kendi wrote last year:

“We should be celebrating our disobedience, turbulence, insolence, and discontent about inequities and injustices in all forms. We should be celebrating our form of patriotism that they call unpatriotic, our historic struggle to extend power and freedom to every single American. This is our American project.”

Amen to that.

Whatever happens tomorrow, this land was made for every last one of us.

Peace,
Milton

uncle milty’s guinness and chocolate chili

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4
uncle milty’s guinness and chocolate chili

One of the things I learned along the way is curry is not the name of an actual dish but a description of a kind of dish. A curry can be pretty much what you want it to be. I feel the same way about chili. From region to region in this fair land of ours people are adamant about what “real chili” is, but the fact of the matter is chili is a personal expression that grows out of where you are, what you have, and what you like. Though I don’t understand vegetarian or turkey chili, that does not mean they cannot lay claim to the name.

I am throwing those pillows, I suppose, because I know I am going to get knocked down by my Texas peeps who will say, “Chili doesn’t have beans in it.” Yes, it does, or at least it can, particularly when the person I love most (and who digs my chili) is allergic to onions and I have to figure out other ways to add flavor.

The other flavor concern has to do with spices. You will notice below that I haven’t put any measurements on the spices. That is because part of the fun of making the chili is playing around with the seasonings. We like the smoky taste of the cumin, so I put at least two teaspoons. How much chili powder and so forth often has to do with how many fresh peppers are already in the mix. If you’re not allergic to onions, then I would be dicing those up as well. Perhaps I should say what I have written below is more of a conversation starter than a recipe.

uncle milty’s guinness and chocolate chili

1 1/2 pounds ground chuck
4 cloves garlic, minced
2-5 hot peppers (jalapeños, serranos, poblanos), diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
cumin
dark chile powder
sweet paprika
cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
2 15 ounce cans red beans
2 can Guinness Stout or other dark beer
2 oz unsweetened baker’s chocolate, chopped

Start with dicing the peppers. Part of the way you control the heat of the chili is by how many seeds you put in. The fewer the seeds, the lower the heat. That said, dice the peppers. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven or a deep skillet over medium heat and then add the peppers. Cook until they begin to soften (4-5 minutes) and add the garlic and cook an additional minute. Then add the ground chuck and cook until the meat is well done–about seven minutes. As the meat is cooking, add the cumin, chile powder, paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper, and whatever else you feel like putting in there. Add things gradually and taste as you go.

Drain and rinse the beans and then add them to the meat mixture. When they are heated though, add the two cans of Guinness and bring the pot to a simmer. Let it cook until most of the liquid has cooked away. Once again, how much liquid you want in your chili is up to you. At the every end, lower the heat and add the chocolate and stir until it is melted in. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

I would love to hear your variations on this theme, or what chili means at your house.

Peace,
Milton

pulling ourselves together

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
pulling ourselves together

For All Saints Day, I preached at two churches, thanks to the magic of the internet and the reality of remote worship. One of the churches is working their way through the Acts of the Apostles, so I went with their scripture—Acts 6:1-7—for both groups. It is a collection of verses that isn’t in the lectionary cycle, as far as I can tell, but it had a lot to say to me. Here is my sermon “Pulling Ourselves Together” and Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart,” which felt like a good hymn for the day.

_________________

Every time I come to the Communion table as we are today, even though we are doing it remotely, I carry with me a specific memory of a Communion service at a youth camp almost thirty years ago. My friend Kenny was preaching about the Last Supper and talking about Jesus’ words, “As often as you do this, remember me,” and asked, “What is the opposite of remember?”

“Forget,” was the answer that came from most of the young people.

“No,” he said, “the opposite of remember is dismember. Life pulls us apart. We come to the Table to remember–to put ourselves back together in Jesus’ name.”

As I pondered what to say on this Sunday, which is not only Communion Sunday, but also All Saints Day and the Sunday before our Presidential election, the memory came even more alive. Remembering, by his definition, is not just about memories, but is a crucial part of our daily lives. Whether we are holding the memories of those who have died, or trying to figure out how to take care of one another, or just how to get through these crazy days, we have to spend a good deal of our time re-membering–pulling ourselves together, don’t we?

Our story from Acts 6 is a story of re-membering, of pulling together. I think this little section could be titled, “Living Together Is Hard Work.”

After Pentecost, which we remember as the birthday of the Church, the followers of Jesus began to realize they were the ones who were going to have to make the word become flesh, which meant they had to learn how to live together. The people who came to Jesus were a mixed bag. They were not all alike. Many were not well-off economically. They were not mainstream. What they all shared was their love for Jesus. And they shared that they all lived under Roman occupation.

Then they decided to share everything with each other so that no one would be in need. After all, Jesus did say, “I was hungry and you fed me . . .” But it didn’t take long for things to fall apart, or at least for the new system of solidarity to stumble.

What does it mean to share everything, to hold everything in common?

One of their practices was to make sure everyone had enough to eat, which took time, resources, and effort.

One of the dividing lines in the church was between the locals–those who spoke Aramaic and had lived their whole lives in Palestine–and those who were also Hebrew but had grown up in the larger Mediterranean world. They spoke Greek; some even had Greek names. The issue was the Greek speaking group said their widows weren’t getting the same attention as the Aramaic widows. The apostles recognized there was an issue but said they didn’t want to spend their time sorting it all out. They were the Chosen Twelve—the ones responsible for the new and growing congregation; they didn’t think they should use their time waiting tables. So, they instructed the congregation to choose seven people to handle it. To minister. The Greek word is diakoneo, from which we get our word deacon. A few verses down it’s the same word used to describe what the apostles were doing. In fact, it shows up three times in this passage, each time translated differently: it can mean to serve, to minister, or to attend to—to wait on.

But even though they were using the same word, not everyone looked at things the same way. the apostles said, “It isn’t right–it isn’t acceptable–for us to set aside the proclamation of God’s word in order to serve tables–to minister at tables.”

Now, I have to say as someone who spent a decade of his life working in restaurant kitchens and who loves to feed people as much as I love to do anything, I have struggled to understand the tone in the apostles’ response to the problem. I’m not sure it’s fair to paint them as acting superior, but if I had been one of the ones preparing the meals, I might have taken it that way. As we said at the beginning, living together is hard work. They had to deal with expectations, responsibilities, different personalities, varying backgrounds, divergent political views, and money.

Any of that sound familiar? Pulling together, as we know, is not an easy task. And it is the task to which God has called us.

The theological term we use when we talk about the life of Jesus is incarnation—as John 1 says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. I know enough Spanish to know carne means meat. In carne sounds like “with meat,” which is another way of saying real relationships are embodied, not theoretical. Whether we are talking about a marriage, a friendship, or a church community, pulling together means putting meat on the bones of love. Words alone are not enough. We have to have some skin in the game. The early Christians committed to share everything in common, which meant they had to struggle to figure out how to make sure everyone felt like they were being treated fairly. So, they chose seven people who would be in charge of making sure everyone was fed equitably and they went on with life together.

I started off talking about Jesus’ words at the Last Supper: “As often as you do this, remember me.” In many liturgies, we interpret the first phrase as meaning as often as we share the eucharistic meal, but I think it offers a wider reading. What if we were to understand Jesus to say, “Every time you come to a table, every time you sit down to eat, take the time to pull yourselves together.”

The Greek word for table can be translated to mean a dinner table or a money table. So how about this: as often as we come to the dinner table, the conference table, the coffee counter, the checkout line, or any other chance we have to be with one another, we have a chance to re-member ourselves, to put ourselves back together in Jesus’ name.

For me to say that life has a centrifugal force that throws us all to the edges is not telling you anything new. Pretty much everyone who is a part of this worship has been dismembered by circumstance, left broken-hearted by grief, struggled with disappointment and failure, wrestled with competition and comparison, even as we have opened our hearts to others and loved those around us. We know what it feels like for life to tear us apart and we know what it means to re-member. As we come once again to the Table on this Sunday filled with memories of those who are no longer here and with uncertainty about what lies ahead, let us choose, once again, to pull ourselves together in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

the story of our lives

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
the story of our lives

Sometimes when I have a chance to preach, I feel like I have a big point to get across. At other times, like this week, when the whole thing feels quieter—more of an observation or a remembrance than a proclamation. I followed Moses up the mountain to his death in Deuteronomy 34:1-12 and here’s what I came away with.

______________________________

If I were to say the words, “Once upon a time,” you would know I was beginning a story. Those words have pulled us in since we were children. Beginnings are wide open doors, whether we are being invited to explore the great outdoors or to come inside the house for a more intimate tale. Endings, on the other hand, are harder to deal with, or to do well. Life is a lot like a Saturday Night Live skit: it starts with a good premise but most of the time the ending never really pays off—and we have a lot riding on how a story ends.

I read an article in the Washington Post this week that asked, “What book has the most disappointing ending?” It was written by a book reviewer who made a point of saying they never give away the ending when they write about a book, but endings are what most readers want to talk about. It’s true for both books and movies: how everything wraps up has a huge impact on how we feel about the story. Though it is considered great literature, Romeo and Juliet isn’t the feel-good play of the summer. And we are still willing to sit through all the hard boxing scenes to see the triumph of Rocky enduring the fight and believing in himself, even though he didn’t win.

Yesterday was a big day at our house because the Hallmark Channel started showing their Christmas movies. Though it is still way too early for me to start watching them, I will admit I enjoy watching them. Part of the comfort they offer is you can see the ending coming from a mile away. About fifteen or twenty minutes before the movie is over, the couple that seemed destined to be together face something that pulls them apart. Then, with about ten minutes left, and after the last commercial break, they realize the mistake they made and find their way back to each other–the very thing we wanted Romeo and Juliet to do. There are lights and snow and love and, well, Merry Christmas. Imagine how the ratings would go if, after two hours of drawing the two people together, the credits started rolling right when they walked away from each other.

One of the observations that we make about the Bible is that it is more of a library–an anthology–than a single book. Or perhaps we would do better to call it a book of stories, some more connected than others, but all of them telling the Big Story of the relationship between God and Creation and how we keep trying to learn how to be human.

The Christian New Testament is interesting because Paul wrote most all of his letters before the gospels were put on parchment. Though the Gospels come first in the way we read the Bible now, they were the last to be written. Paul started by writing down ideas, but the early Christians realized what mattered most were the stories of Jesus.

The Hebrew Bible, on the other hand, is pretty much stories from beginning to end. The Torah, or the Books of Moses, where we have been camped out for a couple of weeks, are a five-part set that starts with Creation and ends with the Hebrew people on the verge of entering the land God had promised to them.

Today’s passage is the last chapter of the five books–the Big Finish–and it gives an account of the death of Moses. It’s quite a scene. The preceding chapter holds Moses’ final blessing to the people and then God takes him back up the mountain. Once again, it’s just the two: God and Moses. It seems Moses knew he was playing the closing scene. He had said what he had to say and then he started climbing. He already knew he was not going to get to cross over into the promised land. God had made that clear. The narrator says God “let him see” the land in every direction, which is not physically possible from the top of Mount Pisgah, so something deeply mystical is going on, not unlike the burning bush.

Why Moses couldn’t go into Canaan is unclear. Commentators offer many different explanations, but what matters most is that he wasn’t going to cross over. He had to live and die with that. For all that he had done and had seen God do, he was going to die before the story was finished. He got to make his big speech and bless the nation, but then he died alone on the mountain with God and was buried in an unmarked grave so the spot would not be remembered. The narrator closes the story by saying there never was another one like Moses.

I have to say one of the things that came to mind for me as I read Moses’ final scene was Martin Luther King’s speech to the sanitation workers in Memphis on the night before he was killed. Though he didn’t know he was going to be murdered the next day, he seemed to know the ending was always at hand. He said,

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people will get to the promised land.

He was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorrraine Motel the next morning.

Both Moses and Dr. King knew life had to be about more than checking off everything on our bucket lists. Moses lived a long life and King a relatively short one; neither were finished with what they hoped to do, and they both knew the story of their lives was a part of a larger, more epic tale. They are gone and we keep telling their stories because they are still a part of the larger story that has continued beyond their deaths—the story of what it means to be human.

The writer Anais Nin, in a quote she attributed to the Talmud, wrote, “We do not tell stories as they are, we tell stories as we are.” Poet and theologian Pádraig ÓTuama says that telling stories is the only way for life to become a verb. I recently published a book about the way grief connects us to one another called The Color of Together. One of the paragraphs I wrote says, “My father is dead, but my story with him is not over. I am still turning periods into commas and, sometimes, vice versa. I am still remembering our life together and revising how I think of him and of us as new insights arise.” The story of our lives is not over yet; we are still adding pages.

We are a week away from All Saints Day when we will be particularly mindful of those who died this year–and I know those losses are significant for this congregation. We know what it is like to keep telling the story or our lives after some of our most beloved characters are gone. The Hebrew people did, too. They buried Moses in an unmarked grave and went on to the Promised Land carrying his memory and adding to the story. Listen to Pádraig ÓTuama once again:

To live well is to see wisely and to see wisely is to tell stories and to tell stories is to tell of things that are always changing because even if the stories don’t change, the teller does, and so the story always moves.

I have two people in my life whose parents died this week, one from COVID-19 and the other from finally running out of gas at ninety-five. Death comes. Life ends. Things change. And through it all we keep telling the story of our lives to remember who we are, who we have been, and who we are becoming . . . once upon a time. Amen.

Since I am leading remote worship for the United Churches of Durham, Connecticut for the next three months, I have video of the sermon. The song that follows was a favorite my father and I shared:

I love to tell the story
for those who know it best
seem hungering and thirsting
to hear it like the rest

Peace,
Milton

sweet cream biscuits

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
sweet cream biscuits

One of the things I learned when we moved to Durham, North Carolina is that making a good biscuit is a practiced art form. I worked in restaurants there alongside of some amazing biscuit makers before I felt like I could say I knew how to make a good biscuit. In particular, I want to call out my friend Mike Hacker of Pie Pushers who taught me the most about biscuits and still makes my favorite one.

To say biscuits take time is to state the obvious. But a few years ago I learned that when I wake up on Saturday mornings like this one and it is cloudy and chilly and you wish you had a biscuit, these sweet cream beauties do the trick. They are simple and good. Start to finish they can be on the table in a half an hour. That’s hard to beat.

They also serve as a reminder that you should always have heavy cream in your fridge.

sweet cream biscuits

2 cups flour (10 oz.)
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat your oven to 425°.

Whisk the dry ingredients together and add the cream. Fold with a spatula until it mostly comes together and pour it out on to a piece of parchment and use your hands to shape it into a rectangle. Roll it to about a half an inch thick, keeping the shape, and then cut it into squares. We like them small,
so I cut twelve pieces. Move the parchment on to a rimmed baking sheet and separate the biscuits.

Bake for 15 minutes. Paint the tops with the melted butter when they come out of the oven and serve.

Peace,
Milton

saturday night chicken

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
saturday night chicken

In my book Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal, the chapter called “Signature Dish” begins with these words:

My first date with Ginger, who is now my wife, was a Lyle Lovett concert in a tiny club in Fort Worth, Texas. On our second date, I cooked dinner for her. It was a Saturday night and I put together a mixture of fettuccine alfredo and cajun-spiced chicken that she thoroughly enjoyed. We fell in love with one another rather quickly, so we ate together most every Saturday night that spring and she asked for a repeat performance of the dish so often that we named it “Saturday Night Chicken.” Though we do eat a variety of food, that is our signature dish: the one we most associate with us.

Over the years, I have changed a few things as our tastes have changed or as I learned new things, but it is still pretty much like I made it that first Saturday night.

1 pound boneless chicken breast cutlets, cut in small pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
adobo seasoning (see note)
Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning

fettuccine pasta

1/2-1 cup Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, grated
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
pasta water, if needed

Put a big pot of water on the stove to boil for the pasta. If you are using dry pasta, it will take longer to cook than fresh. The trick is to time it so the pasta finishes with the chicken and the alfredo sauce.

Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces–at least that is what we do. It also works to cut them in strips. Put them in a bowl and toss with the two seasonings. I use about a tablespoon of both because we like it spicy. Experiment to your own taste, or use other spice mixes. You can also add more as you are cooking.

Get a sauté pan or a skillet good and hot and then add the butter and olive oil. When the fats are hot, but not smoking, add the chicken pieces and cook until they are cooked through and a little crispy. Don’t overload the skillet. Put in just enough to kind of cover the bottom of the pan. Do it in batches if you need to. Then set the chicken aside for a minute to make the sauce.

When you know the pasta is close to being done, start making your alfredo sauce. Take another sauté pan and melt about 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add the cream. Then stir in the cheese. If you are draining the pasta through a colander, save about a half a cup of the water. If you are using a pasta fork (I think that’s what it’s called), put the pasta in with the butter, cream, cheese and stir it all so the pasta is covered. Stir over medium low heat until the cheese melts and it thickens a bit. If you need more moisture, add a little of the patsa water. You can also turn the heat up under the chicken for a minute to let it warm up.

Divide the pasta between bowls and top with the chicken.

Open a nice bottle of wine and feel the love.

NOTE: I used to buy my adobo seasoning, but now I make my own, adapting this recipe.

3 tablespoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground turmeric

You can pulse all of these in a coffee grinder, or just leave the spices as they are.

Peace,
Milton

small mercies

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3
small mercies

I know. I haven’t been here in a while.

I’ve missed it. And I’m working to change that pattern for the days ahead. I’ll start with my sermon for today. I am preaching in two places this morning: remotely at United Churches of Durham CT and in person at First Congregational Church of Guilford, which was also recorded earlier in the week since not everyone can get into the sanctuary. Here is what I had to say.

“Small Mercies” Exodus 13:12-23

Back in the days of Blockbuster Video and VHS tapes, Ginger and our friend Cherry rented the movie Casino. It was so long that it took two tapes. They popped one in the VCR and were a little puzzled that the movie just started without any titles or credits, but they chalked it up to Martin Scorsese being a creative director. Still some things didn’t make sense. When they got to the end of the tape and the final credits began to roll, they realized they had started in the middle of the movie.

Our lectionary passage this morning is the beginning of the second tape, as far as the story of the Hebrew people goes. It will make more sense if we give it a larger context. The Book of Exodus is telling the story of how the Hebrews became a people, a nation, and a community of faith. It is also the story of their learning to live in relationship to God in new ways. It began with their Exodus from Egypt. Then the wandered in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula for forty years.

In one of the early chapters of this story, the people complained because they didn’t have enough to eat. No–they didn’t just complain. They whined. “Why did God bring us out here to die? We would be better off back in Egypt.”

In response, God rained bread every morning like dew–manna–which inspired our hymn for today: “Morning by morning, new mercies I see.” In the evening quail flew into the camp and just sat there. Though this part of the story is told only once, the food supply chain was never broken. I want you to remember that the meals didn’t stop for forty years. Hang on to that detail.

One more piece of this prelude: the chapter of the story we are reading today begins with Moses going up the mountain to get the Ten Commandments. He was gone so long that the people began to think he was never coming back and they got anxious. Their pleading makes me think of the line from the chorus of John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery”—“. . . just give me one thing that I can hold on to.”

So they melted all their jewelry and built a Golden Calf to give them that one thing: something they could see and touch—a god they could grasp. Moses came down the mountain with the Tablets, saw the calf, got mad, threw down the tablets and broke them, and then burned the calf to ashes, mixed the ashes with water, and made the people swallow the consequences of their actions. Moses was mad, God was mad, and they people were distraught.

The Hebrew people, as I said, were in the process of becoming a people. They had spent generations in Egypt being defined by who they were not and as they physically wandered in the Sinai, they were spiritually wandering as well, trying to figure out who they were. To see themselves as God’s people meant they had to come to terms with God. For all the parted seas and giant gestures of deliverance, the Hebrews lived with a basic insecurity that God was not going to hang around. They wanted constant reassurance. They wanted a god they could touch, a god they could understand. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says,
“We now understand the entire drama set in motion by the making of the Golden Calf. Moses pleaded with God to come closer to the people, so that they would encounter [God] not only at unrepeatable moments in the form of miracles but regularly, on a daily basis, and not only as a force that threatens to obliterate all it touches but as a Presence that can be sensed in the heart of the camp.”

In the aftermath of the Golden Calf, Moses pitched his tent outside the camp. Both he and God kept their distance from the people, who wanted presence most of all, but didn’t know how to ask for it. From the camp, they could see that God came to Moses in the form of a “pillar of cloud, and that Moses and God were in conversation in a way the people had not experienced: it gave the appearance of two old friends talking.

Moses was a man acquainted with powerful revelation. God first spoke to him through a burning bush that never burned up. When Moses raised his arms, the sea parted and the people escaped Egypt. The Torah records more than one conversation between God and Moses where Moses bargains with God. In this passage, Moses asks to see God face to face and God says,

See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.

I want to go back to the detail I asked you to hold on to earlier: the manna and quail had never stopped. Morning my morning, God had showed up and the new mercies had continued, but Moses and the Hebrew people had lost sight of them somehow.

The Hebrew people wandered for forty years across an area about the size of the state of Maine. When they left Egypt, they thought, I’m sure, that everything was going to be okay. They were freed from their enslavement. God was with them. But it was just the beginning. What they thought would end quickly dragged on for generations. They didn’t know when it was going to end. They didn’t know what to expect. They built the golden calf so they could have a deity they grasp. They wanted a quantifiable life and a quantifiable god. They wanted certainty. They wanted another grand gesture on God’s part to give them a sense of presence and what they got was breakfast every morning.

In one of my favorite movies, Miss Firecracker, Carnelle Scott is a woman who is well-acquainted with grief and tragedy, and who is also in the last year of her eligibility for the Miss Firecracker Contest in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Her cousin Elain had won it years before when Carnelle was a child, and Carnelle is sure she can do the same and that winning the title will change everything. She places fifth.

Later, she says to Mac Sam, the come-and-go love of her life, and also one of her biggest encouragers, “I just want to know what I can reasonably expect out of life.”

“Not much,” he answers, laughing and coughing at the same time.

“But something,” she persists.

“Eternal grace,” he says.

We are wandering into the eighth month of distance and isolation connected to COVID-19. In many ways, we are less sure about when this will be over than ever. We are a little over two weeks away from an election that will answer some questions but leave much of our cultural turmoil and division still in play. We are struggling to deepen and widen our understanding of what it means to be a people as we come try to come to terms with the structural racism and bigotry baked into our systems. We, too, want some certainty about what is coming next. We, too, pin our hopes too easily on grand gestures. We, too, want to know what we can reasonably expect out of life.

But, like, the Hebrew people, we will find our hope and our humanity in the small merices. We find our faith in the stories we tell that give us a sense of God’s presence, not in a full-on, in your face kind of way, but in how we remember what God has done in our midst. The cliché says that the devil is in the details. No. That’s where God is.

Micah 6:8 is a verse we quote often: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” The oldest translations read “love mercy” instead of “love kindness.” The manna on the ground each day was an offering of God’s kindness. With that in mind, listen to Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Kindness”

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

In the musical Godspell, one of Jesus’ followers sings, “Day by day, day by day, O, dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly day by day.”

In the messy details of our lives, in our hunger for assurance, in our trust that we are held by eternal grace, and in all that is uncertain about what lies ahead, our daily kindnesses are our best reminder of God presence and our connectedness. Morning by morning. Evening by evening. Sorrow by sorrow. New mercies we see—day by day by day by day by day. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

trustable

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
6
trustable

I’m not sure whether this poem works, but it seemed worth a shot.

trustable

was the word I heard
the syllabic rhythm sent

my mind dancing into
the past to find

uncrustable

a made up word for
a prepackaged PB&J

designed to say the artful
care of cutting off crusts

takes too much time

care however takes time
so does trust or listening

the prepackaged politics
that polarize us make it

too easy to cut each other off

we are more than a blue-red binary
better than agreeing to disagree

for too long we have pretended
the hard parts aren’t there

pampered ourselves with privilege

but if we are to be trustable
to those we have cut away

life must become more riskable
complicated conversational

don’t talk with your mouth full

Peace,
Milton

scattered

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0
scattered

One of my Facebook friends here in Guilford posted this picture of the sunset blurred by the ash of the fires on the other side of the country.

scattered

the east coast sunset
looks like the west
african haze of the
harmattan but our
sun is not muted
by the desert dust
but by the ashes
of trees and homes
the remnants of
incinerated lives
carried cross country
ashes of remembrance
scattered shadows of
solidarity that say
we are connected
by wind and land
by fire and death
by loss and life
tell me why then
is it that I am
caught
by surprise

Peace,
Milton

all is not lost

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2
all is not lost

all is not lost

the art of losing
isn’t hard to master
bishop said
and that got her
anthologized
and awarded
but not listened to

we have so much
more to lose
life is losing
we all go out
empty-handed

just this year
we lost hugs
and handshakes
happy hours
sacred gatherings
live music and
grocery stores

not to mention
john prine john lewis
boseman and rbg
add your names
I will too

lose your life
Jesus said and
we went straight
for the you’ll
find it part
but not until
all is lost

Peace,
Milton

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